
SPEECH 



OF 



HON. A. G. BROWN, OF MISSISSIPPI, 



ON THE 



BILL TO AUTHORIZE THE PEOPLE OF THE TERRITORY OF KANSAS 



TO FORM A 



CONSTITUTION AND STATE GOVERNMENT, PREPARATORY TO 

THEIR ADMISSION INTO THE UNION, WHEN THEY 

HAVE THE REQUISITE POPULATION. 



DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OP THE UNITED STATES, AFRIL, 28, 1856. 






WASHINGTON: 
PRINTED AT THE UNION OFFrOE. 

1856. 



F 






B\ 



SPEECH 



F^ 



Mr. President : With the indulgence of the Senate, I propose to 
submit a thought or two on some of the points involved in this debate. 

I will not enter the list with those whose range is over the whole 
wide field which this Kansas question has opened up; but shall confine 
myself to a few points on which I think the controversy mainly rests : — 
points which I believe lie farther back than most of our speakers have 
yet gone. To whom does the proprietorship of the Territories belong? 
How far does the legislative authority of Congress extend over the 
Territories? What are the political rights of the inhabitants there, and 
in whom does the sovereignty reside? These are the points which I 
mean, not separately but collectively, to consider. It is time we had 
come to an understanding on these points. A failure to do so at the 
proper time has, I think, involved us in much of the embarrassment 
which we now suffer. 

It will be seen at once that the line of argument which I have marked 
out for myself will lead me to consider, to some extent, the doctrine of 
" squatter sovereignty." This doctrine, however well designed by its 
authors, has, in my judgment, been the fruitful source of half our 
troubles. Before the people of the two sections of the Union having 
(as they supposed, though, I think, erroneousty) hostile interests, and 
already inflamed by angry passions, were invited into the country, we, 
who gave them laws, should have defined, clearly and distinctly, what 
were to be their rights after they got there. Nothing should have been 
left to construction. I believed, when the Kansas bill was passed, that 
it conferred on the inhabitants of the Territories, during their territorial 
existence, no right to exclude or in any wise to interfere with slavery. 
I then thought, and still think, it the duty of the law-making power in 
a Territory to treat all property alike ; to give the same protection to 
one species of property that it gives to another. But I knew at the 
time, and still know, that others were of a different opinion. Many 
whose opinions I am accustomed to respect believed that the law- 
makers could discriminate against slave property. It is time we had 



settled this delicate and perplexing question. To me it is there- 
fore a source of unfeigned satisfaction that the senator from Illinois 
(Mr. Douglas) has brought forward this bill. I see in it the germs 
of a final and lasting settlement, on a firm and a solid basis. It carries 
out the original design of the Kansas-Nebraska act as I understood it. 
It fixes the period at which the inhabitants of a Territory may ask its 
admission into the Union as a State, and the report by which it is 
accompanied denies all sovereignty in the Territory during its territorial 
existence. If we pass it, it will be done, I hope, on the distinct under- 
standing that, hereafter, a Territory can only ask admission into the 
Union as a State after it is ascertained by a census, lawfully taken, 
that it has the required federal population to entitle it to at L>ast one 
representative in Congress; and upon the further understanding that 
the sovereignty is not in the Territory, but that it is in abeyance, held 
by the States or the United States in trust for the Territory until its 
admission as a State. 

The advocates of States rights have always held that the Territories 
are the common property of the States ; that one State has the same 
interest in them as another ; and that a citizen of one State has the 
same rights to go to them as a citizen of any other State. The co- 
rollary therefore has been, that a citizen of any one State has the same 
right as a citizen of any other State to go into the Territories and take 
with him whatever is recognised as property in the State from which 
he goes. Thus : if a citizen of Massachusetts may go and take with him 
a bale of goods, a citizen of Tennessee may go and take a barrel of 
whiskey; and if a citizen of New York may go and take a horse, a 
citizen of Mississippi may go and take a slave. It must be so, or else 
the equality of the parties is destroyed. Tennessee becomes inferior 
to Massachusetts, and the rights of a Mississippian are inferior to those 
of a New Yorker. 

This doctrine finds opposition in many quarters. It is opposed by 
freesoilers and by the advocates of that uncertain theory which some 
call territorial sovereignty; others, popular sovereignty; and others 
again, squatter sovereignty; — a theory which the author of this bill so 
well combats in the declaration that "the sovereignty of a Territory 
remains in abeyance, suspended in the United States in trust for the 
people until they shall be admitted into the Union as a State." To 
this declaration I give my assent. It would perhaps have been more 
exact to have said that the sovereignty is in the States. But if it is 
in the United States as a trust, it can never be used by the trustee for 



his own purposes ; and, therefore, while it may not be so sound in 
theo^, it will be found quite as sate in practice, to admit that it is in. 
the United States. 

I have said that the States were equal and had equal rights in the 
Territories, and I have thereby admitted that Massachusetts is equal to 
Mississippi, and has all the fights in the Territories which I claim for Mis- 
sissippi. If this equality does not exist, why does it not? Did it never 
exist, or has it been destroyed? That it did exist is manifest from the 
very nature and structure of the government under which we live. 
The States were equal before they adopted the constitution, and they 
entered the confederacy as equals. That the equality has not been 
destroyed is proven by the organization of this body, in which the 
smallest State has two votes and the largest has no more. The States 
were equals out of the Union, they must be equals in it. 

The power which can destroy the equality of the States must be 
that supreme power which we call the sovereignty — the power in the 
State, which is superior to all other powers. 

Where does this power reside? Is it in Congress? May Congress 
exercise the power of a sovereign in the Territories ? 

The doctrine of Congressional sovereignty I understand to be de- 
nied in the report which accompanies this bill. The eminent and dis- 
tinguished author of this report (Mr. Douglas) reposes the sover- 
eignty in the United States, in trust for the Territory until it becomes a 
State. I need hardly make an argument to show that a trustee can- 
not use a trust for his own purposes, nor for purposes not clearly em- 
braced in the deed. A fund held in trust for an infant, to be delivered 
when he comes of age, must be held without waste, and delivered to 
him without deduction at the proper time. The same rule, I appre- 
hend, will hold as between the United States and a Territory. 

If. Congress may at pleasure use a trust confided to the United 
States for the benefit of a Territory, so as to exclude slavery from that 
Territory, then there can be no reason why Congress may not, in the 
exercise of the same trust, exclude spirituous liquors, foreign and do- 
mestic goods, or any thing else that, offends the prejudices or excites 
the passions of the trustee, or I should rather say the representative of 
the trustee, for Congress is but the representative of the United 
States. 

I am not going to discuss the constitutional power of Congress" to 
exclude slavery from the Territories. If the argument on that point 
has. not already been exhausted, it has at least became threadbare. It 



is asserted and maintained with great unanimity oy all sound demo- 
crats, that Congress has no such power. If Congress has not the 
authority, who has? Where does it reside? Is it in the territorial 
legislature? What is a territorial legislature ? It is the creature of 
Congress. Can Congress confer powers it does not itself posses? Can 
the creature derive powers which do not belong to the creator? Can 
the stream rise higher than its source ? The manifest answer to all 
these questions must be no. Congress can confer on the Territories 
just such powers as itself possesses, and none other; and as Congress 
does not possess this power, it cannot confer it on the territorial legis- 
lature. 

The excluding of slavery or any other property from the country, 
is a high act of sovereignty. If Congress, the representative of the party 
holding the sovereignty in trust, may exercise this power, then Congress 
ceases to be the mere agent of a trustee, and becomes the owner and 
paramount title holder. If the territorial legislature may exclude sla- 
very, or otherwise exercise the rights of sovereignty in the Territory, it 
must do it by virtue of a special grant from the trustee. But if the 
United States invests the Territory with that sovereignty, or any part of 
it, which it holds in trust to be delivered up when the Territory becomes 
a State, it abuses its trust as much so as if a guardian holding pro- 
perty in trust for an infant ward to be delivered when the ward be- 
comes of age, abuses his trust, if he deliver the property during the 
minority of the ward. 

These reflections have been produced by no disposition to carp at or 
find fault with any one's doctrines or opinions, but from an earnest 
desire to reach wise and salutary conclusions as to what is the true 
theory on this troublesome point. 

There seems to be a certain undefined idea in the minds of some 
men, that the sovereignty of a Territory is inherent in the people of a 
Territory; that it came to them from on high ; a sort of political manna 
descended from Heaven on these children of the forest. This doctrine, 
I confess, is a little too ethereal for me. I don't comprehend it. But 
this I know, if the sovereignty is in the people of the Territory, whether 
they obtained it from God or men, the conduct of this government 
towards them is most extraordinary. It is nothing short of downright 
usurpation and despotism. We have now seven governors, appointed 
by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to 
govern the seven Territories of the United States. We have seven 
different sets of territorial judges, appointed in the same way, to expound 



the laws for the seven Territories. We have marshals to arrest, and 
district attorneys to prosecute, the inhabitants of these sovereignties in 
their own country. We require the Territories to legislate in obedience 
to our acts, and, lest they may go astray, we sometimes oblige them to 
send up their laws for our approval. It has happened, time and time 
again, that their legislation has fallen under the disapprobation of 
Congress, and thereby became void. What a mockery to disclaim the 
sovereignty yourselves declare that is in the people of the Territory, 
and then send a governor to rule them ; judges to expound their laws ; 
marshals to arrest and district attorneys to prosecute them ; and, finally, 
to require these sovereigns to send up their laws foFyour sanction, and 
then, by your disapproval, to render them null. 

If the sovereignty is not in Congress, and not in the Territories, you 
ask me, where is it ? The question has been answered by the senator 
from Illinois, in the very able report which accompanies this bill. He 
says, " it is in abeyance suspended in the United States in trust for the 
people of the Territories until they are admitted into the Union as a 
State." I have already indicated my entire willingness to adopt this 
answer, though I should have answered somewhat differently myself. 
I should have said, it is in the States, or, if you please, in the people of 
the States. 

It may be well in this connexion to give my own views on this point. 
I hold that the rights of sovereignty over the Territories, never having 
been delegated to Congress, are, in the language of the constitution, 
reserved to the States, or to the people of the States. 

When the constitution was framed there were no such people as the 
people of the Territories. The people spoken of in the constitution, 
must, therefore, have been the people of the States, for there was none 
other. 

The sovereignty being in the States or in the people, Massachusetts 
must retain her part, New York hers, Tennessee hers, Mississippi hers, 
and all the other States their parts, respectively, to be held and ex- 
ercised jointly, until the Territory, with the requisite population legally 
and constitutionally ascertained, and with a republican form of govern- 
ment, asks admission into the Union as a State. As she steps into the 
Union she becomes co-equal with the other States, and es instanti, the 
sovereignty passes from the States as they now exist into the new 
State. 

It will be seen at once that I make a wide difference between ex- 
isting and incipient States. On this point I believe the practice of the 



8 

government has been right. That practice has marked the difference 
in broad and legible characters between States and Territories. ' The 
existing States have always elected their own governors, appointed 
their own judges, and no man in his wildest fancies has ever dreamed 
of having a State send up her laws for the approval of Congress. The 
sovereignty of the States has been manifested in the full and unrestrained 
freedom wilh which they have acted on all these points. Exactly the 
contrary has been true in reference to incipient States or Territories. 
Whenever they have acted, it has been in subordination to the authority 
of Congress — a subordination which at once, in nry judgment, destroys 
all idea of sovereignty. 

The President's annual message to Congress, I am glad to say, is 

marked by a boldness and originality of thought, and a frankness of 

expression, that challenges and receives the tribute of my sincere 

admiration. In that paper he declares that " the country has been 

awakened to a perception of the constitutional principle of leaving the 

matter (slavery) to the discretion of the respective existing and incipient 

States." I have no criticism to make on this language ; I quote it only 

to say, that if by an incipient State the President means a Territory 

with the requisite population to entitle it to one representative, lawfully 

ascertained, and in the act of forming a constitution, preparatory to 

admission into the Union as a State, then I agree with him fully, 

entirely, and cordially ; such an incipient State has the right to settle 

the slavery question for herself. There can remain but one act necessary 

to the perfection of that right,, and that is, her actual admission as a 

State. If Congress, however, should exclude her, her action in regard 

to slavery would fall with the rest of her constitution. She would in 

that case resume her position as a Territory. There can be no such 

thins: as a State out of the Union. 

I take this occasion to declare before this Senate, that a Territory 
asking admission into the Union as a State ought not to be excluded 
on the ground that her constitution admits or prohibits slavery. If in 
all other respects she is prepared for admission, it would be a monstrous 
outrage to exclude her on account of the pro or and- slavery feature in 
her proposed constitution. 

I have not denied, and do not mean to den3 r , the right of seif-govern- 
ment in a Territory. We may differ as to what constitutes self-govern- 
ment ; but 1 will go as far as any other man in maintaining the right. Do 
you ask me what, in my opinion, the people of a Territory have a right to 
do? I answer, unhesitatingly, they may do whatever is necessary to pro- 



tect the public morals, or insure the public safety- Thus, the Territory 
may require spirituous liquors taken there from Ohio to be so kept and 
so used as that the public morals may not suffer thereby ; and it may 
require a vicious animal taken from another State to be impounded, or 
so disposed of as that the public safety may not be endangered. And 
upon the same principle I admit it to be within the competency of the 
territorial legislature to regulate the use of slave property. To regulate, 
however, is one thing; to destroy without cause, and in simple obedience 
to public prejudice, is another and a very different thing. 

It is competent for the sovereign to say what is and what is not 
property within his dominions. It will require the highest attributes 
of sovereignty, however, to determine so important a question as this. 
Attributes, in my judgment, far above those that belong to this Con- 
gress or to the Territories. Attributes which are inherent in the States, 
and, not having been delegated, are yet in the States, and no where else. 
I have spoken of slaves simply as property, because it is in that 
relation that they will go to the Territory if they go there at all. Con- 
sidered as persons only, there would perhaps be no effort made to 
exclude them. The relations between master and slave, parent and 
child, husband and wife, are all proper subjects of legislative regula- 
tion. But no one of them more than another is a proper subject for 
legislative distinction. It would be a monstrous exercise of power to 
dissolve all the matrimonial ties in a Territory, and absolve all the 
children from obedience to their parents, and yet it would require no 
greater power to do this than it would to break what is flippantly 
called the fetters that bind a slave to his master. 

Am I asked if there is no power, no right anywhere, to abolish or 
prohibit slavery in the Territories. I answer, emphatically, that there 
is. It is in the States. A Territory is common ground. The States meet 
there as equals. No one has rights superior to another. So long as 
the equality can be maintained, and good faith preserved, no prohibit- 
ory or other act against slavery is necessary. If divisions spring up, 
and discord takes the place of harmony, then one of two things may be 
done. And either, in my judgment, will be consistent with the obliga- 
tions, rights, and duties, of all the parties to the compact of our 
Union. 

I have seen no necessity for the application of either of these remedies 
in our past history. I see none now. If the necessity shall ever arise, 
these remedies may be applied ; their application, however, will be 
useless. The state of affairs that will make such remedies necessary, 



• 10 

will make the Union not worth preserving. I speak of them as 
remedies, but remedies never in my judgment to be applied. 

If the States cannot occupy the territory jointly, the first and best 
remedy is to divide it. This may be done by a compact between the 
States. The compact, however, must be made by the States so acting 
in concert as to give the force and effect of a constitutional obligation 
to their expressed will. It cannot be done by Congress, nor by the 
State legislatures. Congress may propose, and the States speaking 
through their legislatures may ratify, an agreement, and thus give it the 
force and binding obligations of a compact. The States, acting through 
a convention of delegates so chosen as to represent the sovereignty, 
could make a compact. But as neither Congress nor the State legis- 
latures represent the sovereignty, neither can make a compact that 
would be binding on the States. 

The Missouri compromise, though passed by Congress and acquiesced 
in for a long time by the States, was never a compact, not having re- 
ceived at any time the sanction of the States with a view to make it 
so. I do not mean to say that compacts are provided for in the con- 
stitution. But I do mean to say, that, looking to the nature and struc- 
ture of our government, it is my opinion that agreements may be en- 
tered into between the States that will be of higher authority than mere 
legislative enactments, and yet of lower dignity than a written consti- 
tution. 

If a compact, such as I have mentioned, cannot be made, and discord 
continues to reign, the next and only remaining remedy is to prohibit 
or abolish slavery in the Territories, as you would do it in the States, 
by a change of the federal constitution. The mode is pointed out in 
the 5th article of the constitution in these words : " The Congress, when- 
ever two-thirds of both houses shall deem it necessaryr, shall propose 
amendments to this constitution, or, on the application of the legisla- 
tures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for pro- 
posing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents 
and purposes, as part of this constitution, when ratified by the legisla- 
tures of three-fourths of the several States, or by conventions in threes- 
fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be pro- 
posed by the Congress ; provided that no amendment which may be 
made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, shall in 
any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of 
the first article ; and that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived 
of its equal suffrage in the Senate." 



11 

If it shall be said that this is a plan of impracticable execution, I 
reply, " it is so denominated in the bond" — the bond of our Union— 
the bond of our safety. And though I would not demand of you the 
pound of flesh, I will yield nothing to your demands that is not denomi- 
nated in the bond. 

I utterly deny the power of Congress over slavery in the Territories. 
The majority report of the committee, in my judgment, takes the true 
ground, to wit: that Congress derives its power to make laws for the 
Territories from that clause in the constitution which gives it the right to 
admit new States. If Congress has the substantive power to admit a 
new State, it follows as a necessary incident that it has a right to pre- 
pare the State for admission. But in thus preparing a State it will 
be an assumption of power not warranted by the grant, to take advan- 
tage of her weak and dependent condition, and so to shape and mould 
her institutions as to force her, nolens volens, to take sides with one or the 
other of the parties to a sectional contest. 

It was to avoid all suspicion of foul injustice like this to the Terri- 
tory, as well as for the purpose of steering clear of an unhappy and 
unnatural sectional conflict, that the Kansas bill declared it to be "the 
true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any 
State or Territory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people 
thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions 
in their own way, subject only to the constitution." 

I concur fully with the able senator from Illinois, in saying that the 
inhabitants of Kansas, during their territorial existence, " are entitled 
to enjoy and exercise all the privileges and rights of self-government, 
in subordination to the constitution of the United States, and in obedi- 
ence to their organic law passed by Congress in pursuance of that in- 
strument." I would leave the people there perfectly free to regulate 
their domestic affairs in their own way, subject to the constitution and 
their organic law. But I can never admit that the power to regulate 
carries with it the right to destroy. Or that the people of a Territory, 
having the right to regulate an institution within their limits, have ne- 
cessarily, or by any fair inference, the right to exclude that institution 
from the Territory. And in this view of the subject I am sustained, I think, 
by the luminous and powerful report of the senator [Mr. Douglas] 
who introduced this bill. The senator indicates in that report that 
Congress has no power to exclude from the Territories the domestic in- 
stitutions of the States, and that the Territories, deriving their legisla- 
tive powers solely from the constitution through the acts of Congress, 



12 

can, of course, do nothing which they are not empowered to do, either 
hv the constitution or by Congress. But it is better, perhaps, to take 
the very words of the report. It says : 

"The organic act of the Territory, deriving its validity from the 
power of Congress to admit new States, must contain no provision or 
restriction which would destroy or impair the equality of the proposed 
State with Ihe original States, or impose, any limitations upon its sov- 
ereignly which the constitution has not placed on all the States. So 
far as the organization of a Territory may be necessary and proper as 
a means of carrying into effect the provision of the constitution for the 
admission of new States, and when exercised with reference only to 
that end, the power of Congress is clear and explicit ; but beyond that 
point the authority cannot extend, for the reason that all ' powers not 
delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by 
it to the States, are reserved to the States repectively, or to the peo- 
ple.' In other word.:., the organic act of the Territory, conforming to 
the spirit of the grant from which it receives its validit\ T , must leave 
the people entirely free to form and regulate their domestic institu- 
tions and internal concerns in their own way, subject only to the con- 
stitution of the United States, to the end that when they attain the requi- 
site population, and establish a State government in conformity to the fede- 
ral constitution, they may be admitted into the Union on an equal footing 
with the original States in all respects whatsoever." 

This explanation is apposite and conclusive. It denies to Congress 
the constitutional power to go further than to give an organic law to 
the Territoiw ; anel it places the denial on the impregnable basis of 
leaving the new State which is to grow out of the Territory "at perfect 
liberty to seek admission into the Union on an equal footing with the 
original States in all respects whatsoever." States have been admittcel 
as non-slaveholeling States, because they chose to exclude slavery ; 
others have been aelmitted as slaveholding States, because they chose 
to hold slaves. Congress, in the days of their incipiency, did not 
undertake to mould and fashion their institutions. If other States are 
to be admitted on "an equal footing in all respects whatsoever," Con- 
gress must preserve a like course of non-intervention in their domestic 
affairs in the days of their incipiency. If Congress has no other power 
than to give an organic law to the Territory, — if, in the language of the 
report, "the authority cannot extend beyond that point," — then it is 
clear Congress has not, because it could not, confer upon the Territory 
he right to exclude slavery. And if, as is pertinently said in another 



13 

part of the same report, " the rights and privileges" of the peopie o 
the Territory " are all derived from the constitution through the acts of 
Congress,'" and "they have no inherent sovereign right to annul the 
laws" which Congress has given them, it becomes equally clear that 
they have no authority derived from any quarter, either the constitution, 
the acts of Congress, or the God of nature, during their period of terri- 
torial existence, to exclude slavery. Such is my understanding of the 
report; such I believe to be the true intent and meaning of its author ; 
and, so understanding and so believing, I give to the report my cordial 
and unqualified endorsement and approval. 

If, contrary to the opinions I have expressed, and contrary to the 
opinions so clearly indicated in the report of the committee, the people 
of a Territory have the right to exclude slavery or other State institutions 
or property, it follows, as a matter of course, that a Territory is as much 
a sovereignty as a State. Nebraska is equal in dignity to Virginia, 
and Kansas may do within her limits whatever South Carolina may 
do within hers. A Territory may, and of right ought to, elect its own 
governor, appoint its own judges, make and expound its own laws ; 
and, in short, do whatever a free and independent State may of right 
do. Kansas would in fact be superior, in many respects, to South 
Carolina. That venerable and patriotic State, having joined the con- 
federacy, has parted with her right to make treaties and form alliances. 
But Kansas, being a sovereignty out of the Union, I can conceive of 
nothing that is to prevent her from making treaties, contracting alliances, 
or doing anything else which a sovereignty may do, even to the extent 
of uniting her destiny with that of England or France. If an incipient 
State is equal to an existing State on the subject of slavery, I cannot, 
for the life of me, see why the equality does not extend to everything 
else. But I can and do see that a State in the Union has parted with 
many of her political rights, whereas a State out of the Union has parted 
with none of hers ; and, therefore, that it is better to be a State out ot 
the Union than a State in it. 

I cannot close my remarks on this branch of the subject without 
thanking the honorable Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] for his 
powerful vindication of the constitutional rights of all sections of. the 
country. While he deals justice to the South with a liberal hand, he 
deducts not one jot nor tittle from the equal rights of the North. He 
holds the scales of justice in equal balance between the two sections. 
This all fair-minded men must applaud. For myself, I ask nothing 
more, and will accept nothing less. 



14 

A word more, Mr. President, and I am done. In passing the Kan- 
sas bill, Congress, in my opinion, commuted one error, and out of that 
error has grown much of the confusion and discord which have ever 
since distracted the inhabitants of the Territory. It was just to repeal 
the Missouri restriction. But it was unwise to leave the inhabitants of 
the Territory in doubt as to the extent of their real powers. It was 
a grievous error not to have defined precisely what we meant "by 
leaving the people of the Territory perfectly free to form and regulate 
their domestic institutions in their own wa} r ." 

The report of the committee and the bill under consideration pro- 
pose to correct that error. The report defines with accuracy and pre- 
cision what are the rights of the Territory during its territorial existence ; 
and the bill proposes to authorize " the legislature of the Territory to 
provide, by law, for the election of delegates by the people, and the 
assembling of a convention to form a constitution and State govern- 
ment, preparatory to the admission into the Union on an equal footing 
with the original States, so soon as it shall appear, by a census to be 
taken under the direction of the governor, by the authority of the legis- 
lature, that the Territory .contains ninety -three thousand four hundred 
and twenty inhabitants — that being the number required by the present 
ratio of representation for a member of Congress." 

This is as it should be. It points to the time and circumstances 
under which Kansas may seek and receive admission into the Union as 
a State. When she seeks admission according to the terms prescribed 
in this bill, she shall receive it if my vote will give it to her, and I will 
not inquire whether her constitution sanction or exclude slavery. 

I have always believed, and now declare, that wherever a census 
has been fairly taken, and the result has shown that a Territory has the 
federal population to entitle it to one representative in Congress, it has 
the right to form a republican constitution and ask admission into the 
Union as a State. And I now give notice to all whom it may concern, 
that I will vote in all cases for the admission of States thus applying, 
without a wiry or a wherefore, and without stopping to inquire whether 
their proposed constitution recognise or prohibit slavery. 

If this bill passes, as I sincerely trust it may, we shall have estab- 
lished a precedent that will stand, I hope, as a landmark and a guide 
in all time to come. It will fix a period at which the people of a Ter- 
ritory, acting within the purview of the constitution, in obedience to the 
authority of Congress rightfully exercised, and with the entire consent 
of all the people, may peaceably assemble and decide the slavery 



15 

question for themselves. When they have thus decided, there will 
doubtless be a universal acquiescence. Passion will subside ; reason 
will resume her dominion ; there will be no further cause of bickering ; 
and we shall say with one voice to all the Territories, " Go thou and do 
likewise." 



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